Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/208

 at the ranch toward evening. He came riding the outlaw's horse, with the long-carrying rifle that he had wrenched from the dead robber's hand as he lay before the bank door. He told Louise he had spent the afternoon looking over his cattle. They had filled out surprisingly, he said; many of the younger ones could be marketed in a pinch just as they stood.

Tom was not in the mood for dancing that night, he said. He jigged through a set with Jinny, dischargsing his obligation of respect; one with Maud, because she asked him to, and another with Louise, to keep her away from the ranch foreman who called off through his nose, and wore a black shirt without coat or vest, with a necktie as red as a flame. The rest of the time he stood around talking with Jim and his guests in his soft, drawling speech, so much in contrast with the loud, harsh, wide-open-mouthed delivery of the Kansas tongue. Jinny said he sounded as if he mashed the words in the roof of his mouth.

The two deputy sheriffs on guard over what once had been Tom Laylander's herd were there, going it strong on oyster soup, and something that was not soup, which Jim Kelly had in a jug behind the chicken house. They were taking compensation in a lump for their desolate days on the range.

Tom Laylander was the star of the occasion, in spite of his modest withdrawal from its activities in his attempt to eliminate himself from public notice. Jim wanted the story of Tom's ride in pursuit of the bank robbers; how he had picked them off with the dead ban-